<sigh> Death knell of the pedal-powered touring bike?

[Danneaux]

Hi All!

"Why pedal when the sun can power a motor to do the work for you?", ask proponents of pedelec-touring.

"Why struggle with dyno-charging when the humongous solar panel will simply fill a trailer-full of storage batteries?", Dan asks.

Hmm.

Not sure I like where this is going....
In original Dutch here: http://bikeandtrek.com/laatste-nieuws/
Google-translated to English here: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fbikeandtrek.com%2Flaatste-nieuws%2F&act=url
Or via TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/n6bgjvm

Thoughts?

Best,

Dan.

[Andre Jute]

Yup, as usual I'm well ahead of the curve... (1)

Andre "Mr Leading Edge" Jute

(1) That is, if the curve is drawn pretty close to home, and doesn't include any steep hills. I've worked out long since that the sunlight in 21 days on my patch of beautiful West Cork would electrify me for 9km. I've since discovered that, with pedaling, the motor is about twice as economical as I first expected/assumed (maybe mashers are just more powerful pedalers). So, as long as I want to tour only 18km in 21 days, that solar pedal scheme would be brilliant. Pity it's so ugly and clumsy.